Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 2:25 pm Post subject: How to take a bad recording and making it better?

Hi

I have brought into Amadeus Pro 2 a sound piece from a video recording.
The sound has sections of very tiny volume. Squicks of the video camera moving on occasion, and a background hum.

I would like to clean up the audio recording the best way possible, but am not so very familier with Amadeus Pro 2 (yet).
I have tested out a few things. Normalizing, Interpolating etc, but I am not getting as good result as I hoped.

I would like to get this right and at the same time create a tutorial on this.

Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 3:52 pm Post subject: How to take a bad recording and making it better?

You have taken up some task... (Ah, the horrible squeaking tripod.)

In my experience (improving video recordings of a play) there is very
little that you can automate.
I tried different compressor settings, that helped sometimes.
Finally I decided to do it by hand.
You won't get a perfect recording, but you can certainly improve it a lot.

Make a copy of the recording and work on the copy, in case you make
things worse.

First try to attenuate the hum. Usually the sound gets unnatural when
you completely remove it.

Then create actions like "Amplify 120%" and "Amplify 80%". Windows>Actions

Going through the recording, you can select a silent part and apply
one or more actions of 120% . Don't overdo it or you will amplify
the noise.
Likewise select a cough or a chair moving and do one or more actions of 80%.
Sometimes a tripod squeak or other short disturbance can be removed
by interpolation.

After succeeding with a lot of trial and error, you will know Amadeus
a lot better.
And you will want desperately to invest in an extra digital recorder.

I am glad I only have this one recording with a fairly low quality video camera and yes a squeaky tripod.

Attenuate the hum.
What I did was select a section of only the hum. Effects -> Denoising -> Sample Noise. Then I selected the full recording and Effects -> Denoising -> Supress Noise. But as you said removing all of the hum the sound got unnatural. How do you do this step?

Silent part. Do you mean as in very low volume part? Which actions are you thinking about?

I used the Effects -> Interpolate on the tripod squeak, but there are a few of them through the recording, so I was hoping to find a way to select one tripod squeak and have them all removed at once.

The camera that was used for the occasion was not mine as I had someone create a recording. I got the video file and have split the audio from the video file and am cleaning the sound. I use a lot better digital camera to make my recordings (Canon Powershot SX40HS).

So this seems like the perfect tutorial audio file to be used in a video tutorial on how to use Amadeus Pro 2. I have not noticed many tutorials for this program yet._________________My youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/paaljoachim

Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 8:01 pm Post subject: How to take a bad recording and making it better?

The trick to partly remove noise is to copy your sample to a new
file. Attenuate the new sample file to 50 or 70%., do Sample Noise on
this. Then go back to your original file to suppress its noise. This
time the attenuated sample will only partly remove the noise, but
also cause less weirdness.

Like I said, automating things like squeak removal (if possible) is
in practice more work than doing it by hand. Because the squeaks will
all be different and because the results of the automatic removal
will have to be checked.
--
______________________ _
Gerard Bik grafische vormgeving
Van Aerssenstraat 263
2582 JM Den Haag
070 3554081

Somewhat late here....but I have more time these days and that helps...

I used the advice you came with Gerard Bik. I also made a video tutorial, but am just too uncertain about things in the program to make a good tutorial. I got a bit irritated with myself since my uncertainties came forth when I was trying to repeat a few of the ways I made the sound file better.

I removed many of the tripod squeaks using interpolate. I tried the repair center but nothing happend with the sound section I tried to repair. I could not hear any difference between before and afte repairing. So I just figured that I was doing something wrong and just let it be.

Desnoising -> sample noise
Denoising -> suppress noise (worked pretty good sometimes a metalic sound end up coming through so I had to resample another place and that helped.
Denosing -> Multiband Denosing

I also used Amplify either lower then 100% or above to either lower the sound or bring it up.

Relatively new user here, and I've been presented with a recording with breath noise into the microphone affecting the person's speech. Would the sampling and attenuation process described above work successfully to remove that annoying breathiness on the recording?

Posted: Mon Apr 15, 2013 8:25 am Post subject: How to take a bad recording and making it better?

Maybe not the answer you want to hear, but the best will always be not to have the breath noise present in the first place. (The cheap way is to just put a piece of cloth between the person and the microphone.)

If you cannot redo the recording, the only way I see to remove breath noises is to play with the volume controls. The sample / suppress noise is good for removing weak continuous background noise (like in a tape recording), not for removing strong intermittent noises like breath. Regards,

Posted: Mon Apr 15, 2013 3:51 pm Post subject: How to take a bad recording and making it better?

It depends a bit on the exact nature of the problem. 99% of my work is with voice - specifically spoken words rather than singing.

It would help to know specifically what you are trying to eliminate. The big three:

Plosives - Particularly "P" sounds Sibilance - "S" sounds which leap out at you
Breaths - Sharp inhalations or exhalations which overlap with the spoken words

Unfortunately, the best way to deal with those is through direct attenuation.

As Martin said, the best way to deal with that is when recording. Technique, mic position and a pop-screen will take care of almost all of that.

You say there is annoying "breathiness" in the recording. That sounds more like some filtering/eq on the basic vocal signal might work (though it could also be a problem with the recording environment itself.) Have you tried EQ?

Relatively new user here, and I've been presented with a recording with breath noise into the microphone affecting the person's speech. Would the sampling and attenuation process described above work successfully to remove that annoying breathiness on the recording?

Paal-
Really the only tool for this is something like RX2 from Izotope. This covers almost every scenario possible. The *huge caveat* is that you need to know how to use it, and that requires more than a little experience, which only accrues over time.

There are competing products, but IMO it's the best short of CEDAR.

The many tutorials that exist for this product are just a jumping off point, as there are often multiple solutions to a problem, or problems that require multiple solutions. Again, experience accrued over time is key.

Apart from overt problems, almost any recording can be improved by a surprising degree.

BTW, there is a free trial of the product. I'm not associated in any way with the product.